Virtualization@IBM

Blog Authors:
IBM Software Defined2700052JD4Virtualization+IBM2700039S5CNitin_Gaur12000056JBJean Staten Healy2700025BBUJohn_Foley0600026N82SamVanAlstyne110000DM6Balicia_wood270003DW0M
Virtualization combined with Integrated Service Management helps you
use your resources effectively, manage your infrastructures
efficiently and gain the flexibility to meet ever changing business
demands.
This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to
virtualization across the entire infrastructure. Articles written
by IBM's virtualization experts serve as conversation starters.
Topics can range from latest technologies for server consolidation
and tools for simplified systems management and monitoring to
automating IT systems to respond to changing business conditions and
cloud-based solutions for the "virtual" enterprise.

Simplifying today's highly complex IT infrastructures to speed deployment of cloud implementations, achieve maximum utilization of data center resources while improving productivity are very important challenges facing today's IT staff, which are already stretched very thin. Add to this equation a diverse portfolio of compute, storage and networking platforms each with separate, disparate management tools, which don't communicate, and you have a situation which could bring even the highest performing IT departments and data centers to a grinding halt.

Many of our clients have stressed the need, stated simply, to simplify the complicated puzzle of systems management. The desire to improve productivity, reduce IT costs and "do more with less" while continually pushed to achieve higher levels of service seems to be at the forefront of IT professionals minds.

IBM has taken steps to make systems management of IT infrastructures simpler. IBM Systems Director is making it easier for clients to manage heterogeneous environments using a "single pane of glass" to automate discovery, monitoring and management of IT assets (servers, storage, network devices, energy, physical and virtual resources) and workloads. Previous to GHY International implementing IBM Systems Director their IT staff spent 90% of their time on server management and basic administration. Today, GHY International's staff spends approximately 5% of their time performing the same tasks which enabled faster time-to-value for strategic business initiatives! A GHY executive commented on IBM Systems Director’s impact - "The effect on productivity was astounding because it allowed us to concentrate on new services to support GHY's business strategy. We were able to add hundreds of thousands of dollars of value to the business as a result."

The ability to increase resource utilization while reducing costs is a common theme we hear from many of our clients. IT staff’s continually attempt to balance capacity against scheduled (and often unscheduled) workloads. Investing in additional servers to meet capacity, as Forrester Consulting projects in the study, Application Modernization And Migration Trends in 2009/2010, is increasingly less of a viable option. The report projects reductions in IT operating expenses of 36% and capital expenditures of 32%. Companies as B C Jindal have used IBM Systems Director to monitor, understand and proactively identify the impact of demand on the company's IT infrastructure. With this insight the IT staff was able to maximize utilization of server resources and reduce the number of server purchases and capital expenditures by an estimated 50 percent annually.

The Chinese city of Wuxi and China Telecom's Jiangxi Subsidiary used IBM Systems Director to quickly deploy shared, revenue generating services, based on a "pay for what you use" model. For China Telecom's Jiangxi Subsidiary using IBM Systems Director enabled a more fluid and flexible business model by reducing time to deployment from three to four months to two to three days. Wuxi's Cloud Center used IBM Systems Director's "single pane of glass" to centrally manage compute resources for local businesses, helping them avoid capital expenditures for hardware.

IBM Systems Director can help IT reduce the amount of time it takes to install, deploy, discover monitor and manage resources in today's highly complex infrastructures. IBM's systems management approach, leveraging a "single pane of glass" provides enhanced visibility and control of a heterogeneous environment, enabling IT administrators to achieve maximum utilization of data center resources, which can result in decreasing data center costs and increasing productivity.

Want to learn more?

Click on the link to download the white paper – “IBM Systems Director: Optimized and simplified management of IT infrastructures.” The paper describes how IBM Systems Director can help you speed deployment of cloud implementations, achieve maximum utilization of data center resources while improving IT staff productivity.

For the past decade while virtualization has been experiencing widespread adoption it was considered an x86-VMware phenomenon. Sure there are other hypervisors, but for most organizations VMware was synonymous with virtualization. Even on the x86 platform, Microsoft Hyper-V was the also ran.

Virtualization, however, provides the foundation for cloud computing, and as cloud computing gains traction across all segments of the computing landscape virtualization increasingly is understood as a multi-platform and multi-hypervisor game. Today’s enterprise is likely to be widely heterogeneous. It will run virtualized systems on x86 platforms, Windows, Linux, Power, and System z. By the end of the year, expect to see both Windows and Linux applications running virtualized on x86, Power Systems, and the zEnterprise mainframe.

Welcome to the virtualized multi-platform, multi-hypervisor enterprise. While it brings benefits—choice, flexibility, cost savings—it also comes with challenges. The biggest of which is management complexity. Growing virtualized environments have to be tightly managed or they can easily spin out of control with phantom and rogue VMs popping up everywhere and gobbling system resources. The typical platform- and hypervisor-specific tools simply won’t do the trick. This will require tools to manage virtualization across the full range of platforms and hypervisors.

Not surprisingly, IBM, which probably has the most virtualized platforms and hypervisors of any vendor, also is the first with cross-platform, cross-hypervisor management in Systems Director’s newest version of VMControl, version 2.4. This is truly multi everything management. From a single console you control VMs running on x86 Windows, x86 Linux, and Linux on Power. And it is agnostic as far as the hypervisor goes; it can handle VMware, Hyper V, and KVM. It also integrates with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and VMware vCenter.

The multi-platform VMControl 2.4 dovetails nicely with another emerging virtualization trend—open virtualization. In just a few months the Open Virtualization Alliance has grown from the initial four founders (IBM, Red Hat, Intel, and HP) to over 200 members. The open source KVM hypervisor the alliance is championing handles both Linux and Windows workloads, allowing organizations to avoid yet another element of vendor lock-in. One organization already used that flexibility to avoid higher charges by running the open source hypervisor for a test and dev situation. That kind of open virtualization requires the kind of multi-platform virtualization management VMControl 2.4 delivers.